While everyone seems to have a touchscreen in their pocket, the next big thing is having a touchscreen pretty much wherever you want, whenever you want it. This prototype "smart environment" lets you turn any surface into a display or control.
This so-called WorldKit system was developed by Robert Xiao, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with professor Scott Hudson and the work of another grad student, Chris Harrison.

A telephone game that became a viral phenomenon in Pakistan has demonstrated some serious potential for teaching poorly educated people about automated voice services and provided a new tool for them to learn about jobs, said researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Pakistan's Lahore University of Management Sciences in a media release.

Raspberry Pi + Arduino = $100 super PC | CNN

April 23

The Raspberry Pi is all the rage for hobbyists in search of cheap, credit card-sized computers that can run a full PC operating system. Arduino boards have been around nearly a decade, meanwhile, powering robots and all sorts of other creative electronics projects.

Now, a project called UDOO ("you do") seeks to bring the best elements of Raspberry Pi and Arduino together into a single mini-PC that can run either Android or Linux.

Electronic Pills May Be the Future of Medicine | CNBC

April 21

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are working on edible electronic devices that can be taken to monitor people's health and improve patient care.

"We are basically interested in electronically active medical devices that can perform some functions in the body and that can leave body in an innocuous way," said Christopher Bettinger, an assistant professor in the biomedical engineering department at the university.

Marios Savvides, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon and director of its Cylab Biometrics Center, has developed technology that can create an accurate high-resolution image of a face from a poor resolution one, and which can correct for faces turned partly away from the camera.

My Boss the Robot | Scientific American

April 16

There is always a lot of discussion surrounding what, exactly, a "robot" is. The robotics research community defines them as machines that can sense, think and act autonomously. This is not quite right-your house's thermostat can do all these things, yet you would not classify your house as a robot. The difference is that your thermostat is just a small part of what your house does. Only when "robotic" functions are used in service of an object's core responsibility can the object itself be considered a robot.

More than 40 years after Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson's entrancing musical Pippin premiered on Broadway, a new, circus-inspired revival is back on the boards, starring Carnegie Mellon alumna Patina Miller as the Leading Player and Matthew James Thomas as Pippin, the young prince looking for his "corner of the sky."

$30-Million Gift to Boost Energy Research at Carnegie Mellon | The Chronicle of Philanthropy

April 5

Carnegie Mellon University announced on Thursday a $30-million grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation officials said will "dramatically expand" the university's work in the field of sustainable energy.

CMU's Scott Institute for Energy Innovation hosted the National Academy of Engineering Symposium, a series of talks between academics, energy executives and environmental experts on the controversial development extracting natural gas from across Appalachia. More than 300 attendees mingled on campus with visiting students accepted to the Class of 2017.

Bill Gates, the world's second- richest man, has invested in battery maker Aquion Energy Inc. in his third bet on an energy storage startup since 2011.

Aquion, based in Pittsburgh and founded in 2008, is developing batteries that can store power for stationary applications, like supplying backup electricity when wind or solar projects aren't available. The batteries use saltwater, not acid or alkaline, to conduct electricity and are "environmentally benign," according to the company's website. The technology is based on research by a Carnegie Mellon University professor.